


when i knew love's perfect ache

by qiras



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Fluff, F/M, I'm trash and I'm sorry, because that's a thing now, but it's not gonna be and also i don't care, canon-compliant ish?, for now anyway, force bond nonsense, oops i wrote more unplanned pregnancy, these two are idiot virgins, very background finn/poe/rose, very inappropriate use of the force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-18 00:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13670313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qiras/pseuds/qiras
Summary: Post-TLJ. Rey and Ben aren't very good at staying away from each other, and Rey's self-control is severely lacking for a Jedi. Or: Rey gets pregnant through the Force Bond, and that is frankly ridiculous and unfair, she would like to say.





	when i knew love's perfect ache

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArcherHybrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArcherHybrid/gifts).



> written for archerhybrid's prompt about leia comforting rey when she finds out she's pregnant, with a dash of idiot virgins totally in love.
> 
> i hope you like it!

“Rey?”

She rolls over into a warm, firm object, and opens her eyes to see Ben laying in her bed. But she doesn’t scream, of course she doesn’t. It happens often enough now that the Bond connects them in the middle of the night and she wakes to Ben in her bed. Rey is fortunate enough to have her own room; she doesn’t know if other people would be able to see him or how the Resistance might react to seeing their Jedi hero with Kylo Ren.

(The thought makes her heart ache, for reasons and in ways she doesn’t prefer to think about.)

“Hey,” she whispers into his chest. They don’t touch-- or at least, they haven’t, not before, not after Snoke’s throne room and Crait. It’s a rule Rey has set for herself. Touching him would hurt that same place in her heart again, she knew, and she’s learned of its fragility, so she protects it. But now... she’s already broken the unspoken rule. What’s the harm in breaking it a little more? And she burrows deeper into him.

His arm curls around her and hauls her up, so she’s lying on top of him, and his lips press at the seam between her forehead and hair. It aches, yes, but not quite in the way she expected. Rey props herself up on her elbows and looks down at him, his beautiful face. Her fingertips trace the scar she’d left there.

Ben turns his head a little bit and presses an open-mouthed kiss to her palm, and an ache of a different kind spreads through her body, pooling low in her belly. Rey knows what that is. Desire. She’s not entirely unfamiliar with the concept, though she’d not really experienced it with other people. There had never been anyone on Jakku she could have... No. And she’d not felt it for anyone she’d met since then. Just Ben.

“Can I kiss you? Please?” he asks, looking so _young_ beneath her.

She answers by lowering her mouth and gently pressing her lips to his. That much she’d done, once or twice, but she’d never thought it felt like _this_. Maybe it was the Bond.

They keep kissing, slow sips of each other, soft, almost lazy, but they were both much too alert for laziness. Ben’s tongue flicks at the seam of her lips and she opens for him, feeling the warmth in her belly spark into flame. A low moan escapes her when he scrapes his teeth across her lower lip.

Suddenly, he is surging up and flipping them over and Rey is on her back with him on top of her, hips settled between her thighs and hands in her hair, cupping her cheek. A soft “oh” escapes her lips, but she doesn’t tell him to stop, of course she doesn’t. The hand that cupped her cheek travels down to her chest, and his mouth moves to her jaw and her neck. She liked him on her mouth, but oh, this is good too. Rey never thought it could feel this good already.

Ben draws back as suddenly as he’d started, sitting on his heels and panting, “Rey, Rey... Rey...”

She sits up. “What?” Her voice comes out sharper than she’d intended, but maybe that’s for the best. Rey knew she wasn’t... Well. Her own parents hadn’t wanted her. No one really had. She should be used to it, but his rejection stung, still. “You were the one who asked to kiss me!”

His eyebrows furrow, and he says, “Yes, I know.” And the confusion is replaced by a pleading (for understanding, maybe? she’s not sure) when he tells her, “I just... I had to stop myself, Rey. It would go too far, and...”

But she can hear his thoughts (they know each other too well, understand each other too well). _And you wouldn’t want that._

“I do,” she says softly, then a little louder. “I do want that. Don’t stop.”

A muffled groan escapes him, but still, he holds himself back and says, “Rey... I’ve never...”

She smiles tenderly and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. “Me either. We can figure it out together.”

And they’re still enemies, technically, still on opposite sides of a war, and he’s still done things she shouldn’t forgive, but she decides to let herself forget that as she bares herself to him and he kisses her way down her body. Tonight... Rey has never had what she wants. Just for tonight, she’ll indulge.

 

 

She wakes up alone the next morning in a bed that still smells like Ben, and she can smell him on her. And her heart aches, just like she’d known it would.

 

 

The first clue, although she doesn’t know it, is missing her period. (She never had regular periods on Jakku. She didn’t even know they were supposed to be regular.) The second clue is when she starts gaining weight, but that’s just a side effect of finally eating regularly, right? No, Rey doesn’t know until after the third clue makes itself known.

“You have to go to the medbay,” Finn insists.

“No, I don’t,” Rey says.

“Yes, you do,” Poe chimes in.

Rey grumbles, “Oh, you _would_ take his side.”

Finn blushes as Poe says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, what are we denying?” Rose asks as she joins the group.

“Nothing!” Finn says. “We’re saying Rey needs to go to the medbay.”

“Ah,” Rose says wisely. “You really _should_ go to the medbay.”

Rey waves a hand at them. “Just because you three are doing... _whatever you three are doing_ doesn’t mean you all need to suddenly agree with each other on everything.”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “Rey. This is the third time you’ve thrown up at dinner this week-- and that’s just _dinner_. You have no other flu symptoms, and no one else is throwing up, so it’s probably not food poisoning.”

“Maybe it’s just a climate adjustment-thing!” Rey says, a little desperately. It had to be that; the planet they were currently on was more of a jungle, and the heat and humidity combination could be difficult for someone from a desert planet, except...

“Did you do this with Luke on Ahch-To?” Finn asks. “You didn’t do it on Starkiller Base or Takodana, but we weren’t exactly there long...”

“Well... No. I didn’t.” But if it wasn’t that, what was it? What if something was seriously wrong with her?

Rose looks at Finn and Poe and mutters, “Honestly, you’re both useless.” She grabs Rey’s arm and says, “You know I love you. But I will literally drag you to the medbay if you make me.”

Rey deflates and grumbles, “Fine.” But she makes faces at all of them the whole way there, anyway.

She draws a line at letting them all hover around her while the med droid checks her out in a little room, insisting she’d be fine while they waited in the hallway. (Of course, if there was anything seriously wrong with her, there was the added benefit of being able to tell her friends herself, on her own time, instead of having it broken by a med droid.)

Then the droid beeps at her. “Unable to administer requested anti-nausea medication.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Why? Is there something wrong with me?”

“Requested anti-nausea medication not recommended for patients who are expecting.”

“ _Expecting_?” A frisson of fear shoots through her. Expecting _what_?

The droid searches its information bases and beeps, “Records indicate you registered as human, and expecting humans are referred to as ‘pregnant’. Are you more familiar with this term?”

“That is... not the problem.” Rey looks at the droid almost pleadingly, but droids (most droids) have little to no understanding of sympathy. “I can’t be pregnant.”

“Initial scan conducted at the beginning of this appointment indicated you are pregnant.”

“No,” she whispers-- at first. Then her voice gets louder, more insistent. “No, that’s not possible.” Rey stands up, intent on leaving. Obviously the droid was malfunctioning. She’d get the medicine from another one, or an actual doctor, if necessary. She completely ignores the droid that was currently telling her nausea was common in humans in early stages of gestation.

Well. Ignores maybe wasn’t the best word. Rey doesn’t hear the droid at all, because as soon as she stands up, she's hit so hard with panic and fear and nausea and vertigo all at once that the floor rushes up to meet her and the world goes black.

 

 

Rey wakes up in a bed in the medbay, Finn and Poe and Rose all crowded around her bed, and she groans. “You’re all such worriers,” she mumbles, voice rough. “How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes,” Rose says, patting her hand. “Did the med droid tell you what’s wrong?”

Rey bites her lip. What a question, and what an answer it had. She wasn’t even convinced she was pregnant. For kriff’s sake, she’d had kind-of-sex with somebody _once_. Through a Force Bond! It didn’t count through a Force Bond, right? It shouldn’t even possible to get pregnant through a Force Bond!

She didn’t answer.

She didn’t have to, actually, because General Organa burst into the room. “Rey! Force, are you alright?”

Again. What a question. What could Rey say? “No, not really, because I may be carrying your grandchild because I have a Force Bond with your... _estranged_ son but evidently that’s real enough to get me pregnant”?

She didn’t say that.

She didn’t have to, actually, because then General Organa-- Leia, she’d said to call her Leia a million times-- said, “You were projecting so hard, such... _fear_ , and, and _pain_ , and _panic_ \-- I was worried you’d been kidnapped or ambushed.” Leia takes a deep breath and then goes pale. She starts counting, muttering under her breath, “One, two, three, four, five... One, two, three, four, five...”

“General? What’s wrong?” Poe asks.

“There are only five of us in the room, right?” Everyone looks around and counts for themselves.

“Yeah,” Finn says. “Five of us.”

“I count six,” Leia whispers.

“What do you mean?” Poe says, immediately drawing his blaster out of its holster on his hip.

“I count six,” she repeats. “Six Force signatures, and five of us.”

A sinking feeling starts in Rey’s stomach, and her heart beats in her throat. She swallows. “Don’t... don’t panic. I might know why.”

And as soon as she says that, Leia’s eyes snap towards her, and for someone who never trained as a Jedi, Leia’s grasp on the Force is remarkably strong and controlled. Leia nudges toward Rey, and gasps when she realizes where the sixth signature is coming from. Even more than that, Leia... recognizes the feel of the signature. _It reminds her of Ben._ “Everyone out,” Leia says sharply. “ _Now_.”

“But the sixth person,” Poe protests, “you might be in danger.”

“We aren’t,” Leia says. “Get out.” Finn, Poe, and Rose file out with considerably little complaint once Rey nods for them to leave, and Leia’s razor-sharp brown eyes, so much like her son’s, are locked only on Rey again. She moves forward and takes Rey’s hand and very gently says, “Rey. You’re pregnant.”

Rey nods, but she knows it wasn’t really a question. “I think I am.”

Leia tilts her head to the side. “Why only ‘think’?”

“I don’t want to be!” Rey bursts. “I... this wasn’t supposed to happen. This shouldn’t be possible.” Tears threaten the corners of her eyes, and she blinks them away furiously.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Leia’s hand rubs Rey’s comfortingly, and it occurs to Rey that this must be what having a mother feels like.

Sometimes, she swears she’ll never understand Ben.

(But he didn’t give this up, not exactly. He thought he had it taken away from him, dangled out of his reach, and it excuses nothing, but she guesses she can understand how terrible it would be to know the people who were supposed to love you and care about you and still feel all alone.)

“I’ve been feeling sick,” Rey says, “and my friends made me come to the medbay to get checked out. The droid told me I couldn’t have the anti-nausea medicine because I’m pregnant, but I _can’t be pregnant_.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never had sex!”

Leia’s eyes narrow, like she doesn’t quite believe it. “Rey...” she sighs. “We do actually have documentation of at least one woman who became pregnant without sex, so I won’t tell you that’s not _possible_ , but have you really never had sex?”

Rey’s cheeks flush bright red. She really doesn’t want to have this conversation with Leia. “Well... not exactly. Kind of? But it still shouldn’t be possible for me to be pregnant! It wasn’t...”

Ever-practical, Leia asks, “Did you use protection?”

“No... but I shouldn’t have had to!” Rey insists. “I can’t be pregnant!”

Leia holds Rey’s gaze for a long moment. “What aren’t you telling me, Rey?”

Force, Leia was going to throw her out, or Rey would have to abort... Everyone was going to know she’d slept with Kylo Ren and hate her. Kriff kriff kriff kriff kriff--

“Rey? Rey, calm down, come on, breathe with me. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out, sweetheart.”

And Rey came back to herself to realize Leia’s arms were around her, rubbing her back as she rocked them back and forth. Her eyes filled with tears again as she choked, “It’s Ben.”

Leia didn’t say anything, just kept hugging her, letting her tell the story in her own time.

“We have a Bond. I don’t know if... I don’t know if anyone told you.” _Luke_ , she means Luke, but that’s not the point. “But it wasn’t... what we did wasn’t real, so I can’t be pregnant.” Rey breaks on the last word, and the tears wash over her face as she starts sobbing.

Leia had never really entertained the thought of grandchildren. Things in her life had worked out in such a way that she’d never had a time in her life where that seemed like something safe to think about. But the girl crying into her shoulder is already the closest she had to a daughter, and she’s carrying Leia’s grandbaby. Loving Rey was one of the easiest things Leia had ever done. And maybe it’s selfish, but Leia is _happy_. She certainly isn’t ignorant of the difficulty of everything, but she is still happy. Rey will be too, she thinks. Eventually. For now...

“It’s so kriffing hard,” Rey babbles. “Why isn’t he here? He should be here. Why didn’t he say yes? Why doesn’t he love me? Why can’t I be _enough_? For _someone_?”

And Leia shoves her own feelings aside and does her best to comfort Rey, but Rey doesn’t want it. Eventually, the girl stops crying and goes quiet, her breathing evened out. Oh. Rey’s fallen asleep. Leia lays her down gently and kisses her forehead, but doesn’t leave. Rey shouldn’t be alone when she wakes up.

 

 

Ben comes to her again that night. As soon as he sees her, his hands are all over her body and his lips are all over her face. “Oh, thank Force,” he mutters, over and over again. “Thank Force, you’re okay.”

She grabs his wrists. “No. No, stop.”

He looks at her, brown eyes wide and hurt. “Why?”

“If I were hurt, it would probably be the First Order’s fault,” she says clearly. Rey doesn’t say the words they’re both thinking: _your fault_.

“No. They’re not supposed to hurt you, Rey. They have orders,” he says, taking a step back from her bed.

Her eyes well with tears again. And here she’d thought she’d cried them all out. “And what about my friends? Your mother? Are they not supposed to hurt them either?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Why can’t you just come home, Ben?” She sniffles, wiping roughly at her cheeks, and she looks up at him, hazel eyes he could lose himself in forever. “I need you.”

Ben moves forward and takes her hand. “Then come to me. Come with me.”

Rey yanks her hand out of his grasp. “No. No, Ben, you know it isn’t right. You know the First Order isn’t right. You know that, no matter how I feel about you, I can’t betray what is _right_ like that. Please,” she almost begs, “Please, come to me. We need you.”

Then the connection breaks, and he is gone.

 

 

Morning comes too fast, and time in general moves too quickly. Rey keeps her baby. Leia is the one to suggest abortion, actually, but Rey refuses. “I couldn’t even sell a kriffing droid,” she points out, self-deprecating smile biting the corners of her mouth. “There’s no way I could do that.” And Leia tries to hide her relief, but Rey can feel it, and she squeezes Leia’s hand.

She doesn’t tell anyone who the baby’s father is. When people ask, she shrugs and tells them she doesn’t know his name.

It’s not exactly a lie.

Her friends don’t tell her off for what they assume was a one-night stand was a nameless, faceless man, and she doesn’t correct them. They’re really very good about everything. Rose tells her stories about her sister and when they were little (because she knows Rey doesn’t really know what kids are like). Poe fights any asshole with the audacity to say anything about Rey-- sometimes with his fists, but usually verbally (because they deserve it, and he knows it makes Rey laugh). Finn brings her whatever food she wants that he can gets his hands on (because Ben isn’t here). And when she first thinks she can feel the baby move, they all crowd around and ask to put their hands on her stomach because they want to feel, too, even though she laughs and tells them it’s way too early for them to feel anything yet

She’s four months, and she hasn’t told Ben.

Leia doesn’t say anything, hasn’t asked, but Rey thinks Leia knows, anyway. She’s kept their Bond mostly closed off since he visited her that night in the hospital. They only know the other is alive and whole.

But then there’s a night that’s different again. Rey has never been able to sense Ben’s surroundings, not the way he could interact at least minimally with hers. (She saw the firelight reflected in his eyes, knew his scent on her. He _had_ to be able to interact with her surroundings.)

This time, the Bond connects them. She would rather not. The baby’s been grouchy lately. At least, that’s what Rey says it is. Whatever it is, the baby or her body are not allowing her to sleep, and that’s what she’s trying to do right now. Besides, Rey is getting to a point where her pregnancy cannot be hidden, no matter how small she is. But the Bond will not be shut off, despite her best efforts.

Rey gasps when she feels the rain wet her hair. “Where are you?”

“Rey!” Ben rushes to her again, just like he had when she was in the medbay, hands (all damp with rainwater) running over her. “Oh, good, good. Oh, Force.”

A wave of irritation rushes over her. “Oh, Force sake. What stupid thing is the First Order up to now?”

Ben bites his lip and admits, “I... don’t actually know.”

Hope and lust and something that could be love spring inside her. She asks again, “Where are you?”

“Near you, I hope.” Ben takes her hand and she lets him (only the second time she’s broken the no-touching rule). “I left the First Order.”

Rey can’t say anything for several seconds, then tilts her head and asks simply, “Why?”

“Well,” Ben says, rueful twist to his mouth, “Hux tried to kill me, most pressingly. But... I thought it was what I wanted, and then I realized I didn’t want it after all. It didn’t make me happy, in the end.”

She wants to go to him, hold him, kiss him in person, not through a Bond, but instead she stays planted, only holding his hand as the rain soaks them both. “You can’t... you can’t make this decision because of me, Ben. You have to do it because it’s what you want to do.” _It won’t last if you don’t, and that would kill me_ is what she thinks, but doesn’t say.

“No, it’s not for you. I can’t say it’s not because of you, because without you I don’t think I’d be doing this,” he says, heart in his eyes, “but this is what I want. I think it’s what we both want.” And Rey moves at that, throws her arms around his neck and buries his face in his chest, crying and laughing at the same time. He holds her, one hand in her hair and an arm wrapped around her shoulder blades. Then he feels the small swell of her stomach against his abdomen and teases, “Whoa, I guess the Resistance is doing better on their food supply than I thought.”

Rey stiffens and pulls back, not sliding out of his arms entirely, but putting some space between them. Her face is pale, and she says, “Um. That’s not...”

Ben searches her face almost desperately. “I’m sorry, kriff, I’m sorry. Force, my mother told me never to comment on a woman’s weight.” (She did once, when she’d visited him at the Academy. His father hadn’t come.) “I just meant I don’t think your ribs are visible anymore.” She doesn’t say anything, and he stammers, “Shit, that’s not better. Kriff. I mean, you’re healthy. You look healthy. And gorgeous, Rey, you’re always gorgeous.”

“I have something to tell you,” she says quietly, barely even reacting to his babbling, and it terrifies him.

“Okay. Okay, sweetheart.”

She closes her eyes like she’s bracing herself, which scares him even more, and guides one of his hands to her stomach. Quickly, with the air of getting it over with, she says, “I’m pregnant. With your child.”

For a long moment, he says nothing, and then he is falling to his knees in front of her, hands moving across her belly. “I didn’t... I didn’t know that was possible.”

She laughs wetly, eyes tearing up. “Me either.”

He reaches out with the Force, she feels it nudging against her, and then against their baby. “I can feel them,” he says, voice full of wonder. “I can feel the baby.” And he lays kisses across her stomach, crying and laughing just like she is.

“Come find me. Find us,” she tells him.

“I will,” he promises, and they both know what they are thinking but won’t say.

_I love you._

“Come find us,” she says, “and I’ll say it.”

**Author's Note:**

> i absolutely have no headcanons about their future kid(s, they gonna have more than one), why do you ask?
> 
> and if you wanted to talk to me about these nonexistent headcanons, feel free to [ hit me up on tumblr dot com ](http://www.briony-larkin.tumblr.com)


End file.
